Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Review - Julian Casablancas: Phrazes For the Young
Posted on 5:02 PM by Clumpy
Rating: 6.3Julian Casablancas' Phrazes For the Young fits the underwhelming solo record formula to a T - some small measure of the essence and charisma of the artiste's former group, a few bewildering design decisions caused by too few cooks in the kitchen and a frustrating lack of drive and unity. Phrazes For the Young will undoubtedly please its demographic, though it's essentially a throwaway record with little staying power, certainly not the event its trippy marketing has tried to make it into.
Anybody who's checked out the lead single "11th Dimension" has already heard the best the album has to offer (sorry), and should know pretty much exactly what to expect: a synthed-up and overproduced, melodically watered-down and unapologetically busy The Strokes record.
But even these well-informed consumers wouldn't be able to anticipate a few of the bewildering design choices in this record, including a misguided eleven-minute detour into traditional blues structures for the fourth and fifth tracks, the culmination of which is a cringingly inappropriate banjo solo near the midpoint of "Ludlow St." This track's percussion at times also sounds like a primer for misguided Pro Tools use, with stumbling, jarring claps and painfully tinny snare that clearly belong elsewhere. A singer like Casablancas, who relies on overdubs for his signature vocal style and who really has no idea just what to do with his "r"s, has no business at all singing blues.
In fact, the whole album seems painfully overmixed. Nearly every track features two guitars, bass, standard drums, even more percussion added in production, synthesizers, and extra instruments (trumpets, cowbell, handclaps) added in for mere measures at a time with really no appropriate role to fill. Unlike more seasoned musicians who can use layering and a myriad of instruments to thrilling effect, Mr. Casablancas and his producers really seem to be over their heads here. When read as a concept album Phrazes For the Young almost seems to be a treatise on musicians' fear of isolation.
With these particularly snarky asides now out of the way I should clarify that Phrazes isn't really bad per se, just uninventive, mostly colorless and ultimately unnecessary. Even in the bluesy tracks the vocals sometimes hit some almost Lennonesque wails, and most of the album (particularly the first stretch) is "good" and wholly listenable. But the great strength of The Strokes were their tightness and cohesion, something that simply can't be replicated with a playground full of sounds and only muddled, half-baked ideas of what to do with them. Sorry, but outside of his element Casablancas is exactly what his detractors have always claimed him to be - a vanilla vocalist without a clear sense of direction.
---Dustin Steinacker
[mp3] Julian Casablancas - "River of Brakelights"
